Philly DA to Election Day polling protesters: 'F around and find out'

Philadelphia's district attorney delivered a stern message to anyone attempting to interfere with voters on Election Day - warning them to 'F around and find out.' 

In 2020, Two men who were arrested for allegedly taking an AR-15 and a samurai sword to a Philadelphia vote count center. 

This year on election eve Democratic DA Larry Krasner took time away from his unsuccessful lawsuit against Elon Musk to discuss protecting the vote.

'I also want to be clear. Anybody who thinks it's time to play militia, F around and find out. Anybody who thinks it's time to insult, to mistreat, to threaten people, F around and find out,' said Krasner, one of the progressive prosecutors funded by billionaire George Soros.

He clarified that the city - which leans heavily Democrat and is likely to be a part of Kamala Harris' strategy to try and defeat Donald Trump in swing state Pennsylvania - has 'no deep, abiding fears or concerns' that such a thing will happen.

However, he made a stark promise to deal with anyone planning to interfere with voting, a contrast from his soft-on-crime, progressive prosecutor reputation.

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'We got a pair of handcuffs, we got a jail cell, and we got a Philadelphia jury,' he said.

He made it clear that he was speaking about agitators who brought phony challenges to the vote. 

'Anybody who thinks you're going to play those games in Philadelphia, you're going to do it in bad faith, I've got no problem with doing it in good faith, but if you do it in bad faith, there is an election court, there are judges, they have orders,' he said.

Krasner tried to stress a bipartisan nature to people who potentially would try to stop folks from voting. 

'We do not care who gets your vote. We care that you get to vote. That is the most important thing,' Krasner said.

Joshua Macias, 42, from Chesapeake, Virginia, and Antonio Lamotta, 61, from the same town, were detained two nights after Election Day 2020, police in Philadelphia said. 

Macias founded Vets for Trump in 2016; Lamotta is a member.

Danielle Outlaw, then-Philadelphia police commissioner, said at a press conference that the FBI had been tipped off that individuals were headed from Virginia Beach to Philadelphia with weapons.

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They were arrested outside the Philadelphia Convention Center where ballot counting was taking place. 

Joe Biden had still not been declared winner in the Keystone State over Donald Trump. 

They were told that a man and his mother and another person were traveling to the Philadelphia region to 'straighten things out' as vote counting continued. 

Americans are braced for civil unrest amid scary predictions of 'blood' during Tuesday's knife's-edge presidential election that appears to hinge on the results in just seven swing states, reviving painful memories of recent assassination bids and chaos after the 2020 vote.

The 2024 race has already seen bloodshed, with the July 13 shooting at a Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which grazed the former president and left one attendee dead and two more wounded.

The contest has also been marred by damning rhetoric between the rival campaigns. A speaker at a Trump rally spoke recently of the 'slaughter' of Democrats, and Trump himself has spoken of 'shooting at' former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Meanwhile, Harris has called Trump a 'threat' to democracy who must be defeated at the ballot box, while her boss the outgoing President Joe Biden has called the MAGA Republican's supporters 'garbage.'   

Meanwhile, the specter of January 6, 2021, when supporters of Trump stormed the US Capitol, seeking to overturn the former president's election loss to Biden - has cast a long shadow over US politics.

This time round, Trump has repeatedly refused to state whether he will accept the election results, and is already alleging fraud and cheating in neck-and-neck swing states such as Pennsylvania, laying the groundwork for what many fear will be more unrest.

Tensions mounted on Monday as Trump and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, made their final bid to woo voters, hours before polling stations open on Tuesday in a close-call contest that hinges on a handful of electoral battlegrounds.

The election prediction website 538 slightly favors Trump to win the White House, with a 52 percent chance against 48 percent for Harris — but for many commentators the race is more or less a dead heat.